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Ever since the first Marvel Zombies story appeared on Dinsey+'s What If...? season 1, fans had been clamoring for more of their MCU heroes to either be turned by or do battle with scores of the undead. Now, we're just hours away from the debut of a four-part Marvel Animation series debuting on the streamer on September 24 to be about exactly that. But in all this anticipation and celebration, you may not have had the time to wonder just why Marvel Zombies is coming out as a series, and not, say, a Werewolf by Night-style special.

Well, now we know, and as is the case with so much at the House of Ideas, it all comes back to Spider-Man.

The story comes form an interview that Marvel Studios' Head of Streaming, Television and Animation Brad Winderbaum did with pop culture outlet Who Let Us Out. During the discussion, which covered Marvel Zombies extensively, Winderbaum revealed that a big reason for the upcoming R-Rated show's format was that they could only use Spider-Man sparingly, thanks to the character rights agreement between Marvel and Sony.

"We’re able to use him in half-hour animation," said Winderbaum, "But that meant we had to break our big epic story into four chapters. Honestly, I think it made the storytelling stronger."

As you know if you've been a fan of Spider-Man media in the past two decades (oof, read that sentence and try not to feel back pain), this isn't the first time that shared Spidey-rights have forced Marvel to get creative with their usage of the wall-crawler and his surrounding characters. But hey, at least this time it means more entertainment, and not less.

That said - don't expect to be seeing Miles Morales battling the undead on your screens anytime soon, True Believers. Unless Beyond the Spider-Verse takes a very, very weird turn.

Marvel Zombies slouches toward Disney+ September 24.

Marvel's most reliable superhero has proven he can do a whole lot more than just 'whatever a spider can.' Swing into Spidey's history with Popverse's...

• Best Spider-Man comic books 
• Spider-Man movie watch order
• Spider-Man's actors, ranked

Just watch out for that radioactive blood.